It’s distance from retail locations and public transportation.

You still need to select your neighborhoods for rentals since you are not playing with public money but yours.

We diversify our properties, we insure our cars and health, yet don't diversify our actual life.

I am sure there are folks who do this all the time.. regardless because of things they read on BP or other publications that are talking about strategies that may or may not be legal in todays world.

I was a Realtor in Boulder, CO for many years, and that town was pretty much bubble proof because they ringed the whole town with public open space, so no further expansion was possible in the town.  

Where there is some additional questions are whether items like health insurance for myself and my wife (the premiums not the actual medical expenses) would be considered part of this overhead (in the past we HAVE NOT put this into the "cost allocated" calculations for Sch E but instead listed them in Sch A. 

American Public University has a nice real estate program.http://www.apu.apus.edu/lp2/real-estate/associate.htm

@Alex Bradley when just getting started I would suggest digging into your county public record. 

to the best of my knowledge it is public records in New Jersey however you can not file a OPRA to get it and neither can you get it by going down in person to the court house, if anyone can shed some light on this topic that would be a great help.ThanksDavid@Steve Uhlig 

New Jersey over all is a hot market. more and more folks moving from NY into NJ for lower cost but still need access to city is increasing. the continue to improve public transportation in NJ which will only get better with the flux of people moving into NJ. prices in NJ will continue to go up as this continues to happen (rents and home prices)